


When The Past Comes Calling

by whoneedsapublisher



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Adult Nico and Maki, F/F, POV First Person, Technically it's a canon compliant future but it's really a noir AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9994406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoneedsapublisher/pseuds/whoneedsapublisher
Summary: Nico Yazawa is the city's best private investigator. Once a upon a time, in another city, in another life, she was an idol. She thought it was a past she'd left behind her in smoky memories. One fateful day, however, that long abandoned life came back with a job... and a lot of complications.





	1. Out of the Past

There were a lot of people I expected to see again in my life. Clients, thugs, slightly shady police officers, debt collectors. She definitely wasn’t on that list, and yet here was Maki “Hot shot doctor” Nishikino in my office, holding a purse that probably cost more than everything else in the room put together and wearing an expression that suggested she knew it- and wasn’t impressed.

Her hair was as long as when we were kids, but instead of being simply brushed it was styled and prettied up, curling a little at the end to give it a curve. The colour, redder than the fancy lipstick she was wearing, was all the more obvious with whatever hair care she used, and it practically shone. Her makeup was borderline professional, her jewellery was tastefully restrained, and her outfit was the kind of casual that people who don’t know what casual is spend three hours carefully picking out to look informal.

In short, even if she hadn’t looked like a million bucks, she’d at least look like a couple months’ wages worth of styling. Meanwhile, I looked like the cost of a bad lunch with a good discount.

There’s a very short list of reasons people come into my office: to shake me down, to beat me up, or to hire me. Given that Maki probably spent more on her haircuts than she could shake out of me with a centrifuge and was wearing the kind of nails that you wouldn’t bring to a fistfight, I was guessing she was in the “client” column.

“Seriously? This is where you ended up? The ‘Number one idol in Japan’?” I snorted at the title and mockingly raised my hands, curled into a shape that used to be my calling card. Now, I didn’t need calling cards- it was better if most people didn’t remember me. Plenty did anyway. “Nico Nico nice to see you too, Nishikino.” I said sarcastically, tilting my head in that old familiar way and waving my hands. Maki “Trust fund” Nishikino wasn’t exactly showing off her refined manners, jumping straight to criticism before even acknowledging the twenty year gap since we last spoke. Once upon I time, I found that directness endearing. Now it was just a reminder that I wasn’t worth politeness. I should have just gotten straight to business, but of course, I couldn’t help but respond. “What kinda school idol has a career past twenty five?”

“You could have been an actress, or a singer, or a talk show host, or… something!” Two decades hadn’t done anything to make her less stubborn. Now I’d walked into this conversation, there was no way out but forward. “I didn’t want to be a singer or a host, Nishikino. I wanted to be an idol. I wanted to make people smile. So when no one was smilin’ anymore, I quit.”

Wasn’t even that long before “Oh! You’re Nico!” became “Oh.. you’re Nico?” I spent longer dreaming about being an idol than I did being one. Not that I expected any different. I went into the industry knowing how fake it was and it didn’t disappoint. Backstabbers, fickle fans, conmen, exploitative agents looking to wring a few yen out of a starry eyed girl. By the time I left, I didn’t have any desire to see any of the “friends” I’d made in that industry ever again- and not a lot of desire to see the friends I’d entered the industry with either. I’d done a pretty good job of not doing so until Maki “Former idol” Nishikino decided to strut out of my memories and into my office.

That little trip down memory lane must have put a bad expression on my face because Nishikino backed down. Maybe time had eroded her stubborn streak after all. “Fine. But you still made money before you retired, right? If you had it in your head to take some insane trip to America and pick a new career, you could have afforded something better than… this.” She made a dismissive gesture at my office, and, I couldn’t help but feel, my life in general.

“If you’re looking for a job as my accountant, then I’m not hiring. If you’re not, then my finances are none of your damn business.” I snapped. Guess that was me and Nishikino in a nutshell. Twenty years we’d been apart, and in less than twenty minute we were already at each other’s throats. Who else would dare to drop me like a bad habit and then waltz into my life with nothing but judgement and disdain?

“You used to be famous.” She almost looked sad at that, and I felt the hackles raise on the back of my neck. How did she do it? No one else could get me this mad this quick. My poker face was an asset in my line of work, and I’d endured way worse insults without losing my smile if it was for a case, but she walked in my office with a bad attitude and a nice skirt and I was seeing red in minutes. The hell with it, then. They say venting every once in a while is good for you.

“I used to be a lot of things, _Maki._ ” I said, pronouncing her first name like it was profanity. For me, it practically was. “In love, for example.” Even Nishikino had the decency to blush at that, and opened her mouth to reply. To spout some justification, some cute little reason why there was no way _she’d_ done anything wrong, no way that _she_ could be at fault. Not happening today, Nishikino. “Save your bullshit excuses. If you had anything worth saying on the matter, you had twenty years to say it. Still, I gotta say- coming all this way just to mock me is a new low, even for you.”

She was bright red now, as red as the tomatoes she loved so much, as red as the pasta sauce that I, Nico Yazawa, professional dupe, had made for her just to see her smile on that day so very long ago. The fury in her eyes was as obvious as a cop in a cheap suit playing undercover. Good. Let her be the angry one. My rage quelled by spreading itself, like a fire that finishes with the kindling and jumps to a log, I rearranged my face into an impassive look and leaned back in my chair. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d leaned forward. “Get out of my office, Nishikino.” I said coldly. Of course she didn’t. I knew she wouldn’t even as I said it. I wasn’t even sure I wanted her to. What if she really had turned around and left? What if after twenty years, I kicked her out and never saw her again, never even knew why she’d come back? Would I have been happy with that?

Would it have been better than the alternative?

“I didn’t come here to mock you.” she said after a measured pause. Her voice was a little shaky, and I couldn’t tell if she was suppressing anger or something else. Did I even care? Why should I be concerned with what was going through her mind?

But I did, and I was.

Regardless of my disturbing interest in her inner monologue, she pushed on. “I came here because I was told that I could find the best private eye in the city here.” She didn’t sound like she believed it. I wanted to be offended at that, but frankly I couldn’t blame her. Twenty years ago I wasn’t exactly a super sleuth, and nothing about my office said “famous and successful.”

“Oh yeah? Sounds like I owe someone for the advertising.” I drawled, blatantly stalling for time in the face of her intense gaze. “Were you always this flippant?” she asked, but not in the snide tone I expected, or one of frustration. No, unsettlingly, it was quiet and gentle, almost as if she was as much asking herself as me. 'Did I remember Nico wrong?’ I could almost see on her face 'Or has she changed this much?’ A dangerous subject, and absolutely not one I wanted to engage with. Least of all with _her._  So far, far later than I should have, I finally got down to business.

“Well, whatever the source, your information’s good. If I can’t solve it, no one else in the city will be able to either. What’s the case?”

Nishikino shifted uncomfortably. It seemed like a fairly standard question to me, but she was acting like I was a nun who’d kicked down the door of a strip club and started asking the patrons pointed questions about their wives. I felt my chest clench as suddenly s horrible thought made its way into my mind- maybe Nishikino was embarrassed for the same reason that the patrons of Molly’s Mammeries (first left past Green Street, look for the flashing neon breasts) were. Maybe this case was to do with a lover.

Suddenly I was back in that dorm room, holding my keys with one hand and the doorknob with the other as I felt my heart break all over again. Was I really not over her? After all this time? After two decades of a life that kept me plenty busy, all it took was a vague implication that maybe, just maybe, Maki hadn’t put her love life on hold the way I had, and I was practically breaking out in a cold swea-

“A former patient of mine stole something from me.” Breathe, Yazawa. Breathe. Her love life is none of your business, and now you don’t have it make it your business. I swallowed and tried to keep my composure as my traitorous heart did its best jackhammer impression.

“What did they steal?” I asked, my voice level and managing not to betray the swirl of emotions inside me. Nishikino probably wouldn’t have noticed it anyway, with how uncomfortable she looked.

“That… doesn’t matter. It wasn’t valuable, or anything, so he won’t be trying to sell it. It had… “ Her discomfort escalated to something approaching “buying a dildo and handcuffs and finding out the cashier is your grandmother” level. “…sentimental value. It’s in a blue velvet box about this big-” she mimed a rectangle about the size of a pack of Virgina Slims “-and I don’t think he’d have any reason to not keep it in the box.”

“If it’s not valuable, why-”

“He did it to hurt me.” Nishikino cut me off before I could finish my question about the as of yet undescribed thief. “He was… interested in me, and I rebuffed him. He was my patient, and even if he hadn’t been…” Nishikino made a face that implied rather strongly that this mystery man wasn’t her type and even beyond that she didn’t think much of his prospects. Ouch. “He got in his head that I’d somehow wronged him, and found out from a co-worker where I lived and about… the item he took… and broke in and stole it and then vanished.” She took a deep breath and then continued. “At first, I had no idea what happened, but he started… sending messages. Threatening to destroy it if I didn’t… send him pictures. Sexual pictures. I managed to hire someone to trace where his messages were coming from, but all they could find was that it was various locations in this city. He claimed he’d destroy it if I didn’t send him the pictures by the 12th.”

I sucked in a breath. It was already the 6th. “Not giving me a lot of time, are you?” I asked, rubbing my temples. “Do you have a description of the guy or anything?”

“I have something better.” she said, and drew out an envelope from her purse and laid it on my desk. I slipped my hand inside and drew out a photo of a bald man with a huge scar across his forehead and a number of tattoos. I paled. Nishikino noticed, of course. “What? What’s wrong?”  


“Nishikino… are you sure this is the guy?” I asked. I already knew the answer, but I had to hold out hope that maybe there’d been some horrible mistake. Maybe she just had this picture for other reasons, and gave me the wrong- “Yes, I’m sure. Why?”

Of all the things to get myself mixed up in. I let out and groan and dropped the photo on the desk. “Nishikino, this is Arnati Blake. He’s a high ranking enforcer in the mob.”


	2. This Gun for Hire

And that was the end of the story. Since I hadn’t lost my god damn mind in the last five minutes, I kindly informed Nishikino that I wasn’t going to get killed for someone who stabbed me in the back, and she should contact the local police about this incident. She was angry, but when it was clear that I wasn’t going to budge she left. I never saw her again, and I never crossed Arnati Blake.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Thanks to the influence of an old flame, I in fact _had_ lost my mind in the last five minutes.

There were a lot of good reasons not to take the case. Aside from good old fashioned Darwin approved self-preservation, it was, in many ways, a solved mystery. We knew who stole what when and why. Hell, even had a good outline on how. Couple of minutes with Arnati and Nishikino’s mutual friend and a quick look at shift schedules at whatever hospital Nishikino worked at (I hazarded the guess that it was probably one with her name on it) and we’d practically be able to stage a dramatic reconstruction for the local news. I wasn’t in the business of reclaiming things that were already found. Let the police handle the handcuffs and the paperwork, that was my motto. Given the law’s stance on vigilante “justice”, quotation marks courtesy of Uncle Sam, that approach was one that the cops appreciated almost as much as they appreciated someone else paying me to do their job for them. After all, it’s not like I was real competition. When the tax man came calling “sorry, I found someone else to solve crimes for me, so I’m not paying that part of my taxes this year” didn’t tend to go over well. Nice thing about being blue was a guaranteed customer base.

The bad thing was that when some hardheaded dame decided her cigarette box trinket was worth fucking with the big boys, you had to go knocking on the kind of doors that had a nasty habit of knocking back. Private eyes could turn down cases. Cops had to at least pretend to solve them. And here I was throwing away that advantage.

“This seems like the sorta scenario where you should be making use of the local community’s dedicated and talented law enforcement professionals.” I said.

Nishikino rolled her eyes. It was possible she was annoyed at the suggestion itself, but I couldn’t help but suspect that even a new girl in town objected to my over-generous estimation of the city’s police force. The way I figured it though, half corrupt and half lazy was about the combination you needed to keep the mob from openly ruling the place without starting a war in the streets. Once in a while they put away someone big if they got too brazen about drugs or guns, and small timers were rotated in and out of jail often enough to keep the day to day crime low enough. A lot of departments would have enough dirty money in enough pockets that they’d drop Nishikino’s case on what passed for “principle”, but at least here their bumbling token effort would remind Blake to keep his business quiet if he didn’t want trouble. “There a reason you decide to go private sector?” I asked.

“He threatened to destroy it immediately if I went to the police.” Well, he would certainly know. Even if he didn’t have people on the inside, which he did, someone in a uniform making a house call to ask questions about your ownership of certain objects tended to be what we in the business called a “clue”. It wasn’t an unexpected answer, but it was always good to know if I was working with the police or instead of them. The latter meant a little less snooping around the cop shop trying to get pencil pushers to tell me information the public wasn’t getting, but it also meant less information and no one to hand off to if things got rough. And things were uncomfortably likely to get rough.

I liked to think of myself as having a strong sense of justice. Even if I didn’t work for the police, I was still in the business of catching criminals. Sure, not all of my cases were about legal matters- I got my fair share of cheating boyfriends or lost pets- but in the end, I did take cases to find criminals, and never took cases to help them. But that didn’t mean I was some kind of straight laced fresh graduate from the academy who was convinced that he was going to be the one who flashed his badge at this generation’s Al Capone and ended crime forever. I didn’t make a habit of messing with the mob in the hope that they’d avoid messing up my office by painting the back wall with my brain.

Of course, that sounded good in theory but didn’t quite happen in practice. It was more accurate to say I had a wary working relationship with the mob. Occasionally I needed to get their members arrested, and occasionally they reminded me that they disapproved with some amicable extortion or a friendly beating. Still, I had enough contacts in the mob that I could subtly tip them off when my investigations were heading their way and give them time to clean things up, and in return they mostly left me alone and let me have my informants for cases not involving their members.

Messing with a higher up’s private affairs was exactly the sort of thing that wouldn’t go over well. Even assuming this case didn’t get me killed, it was probably going to get me struck off of Big Eddie’s Christmas card list.

And so, even though momentary insanity had caused me to consider this case that I should have rejected instantly, rational analysis returned an equally bleak prospect for Nishikino’s hopes of hiring me. So once again, I prepared to turn her down and send her on her way.

And then my observational skills stabbed me in the back.

As a professional snoop, being observant was a pretty essential job skill. What you noticed at a glance could make or break a case, since people had a nasty habit of hiding things real fast. But in this particular instance, it would have been much, much better if I didn’t notice that Nishikino’s ring fingers were both unadorned. Even that wasn’t the nail in the coffin, but a life of tracking the kind of trash who took off their wedding ring to pick up barflies had made me very knowledgeable about what a finger that usually carried a ring looked like, and Nishikino’s hands were sorely lacking in any digits of that particular breed.

This little fact didn’t square with my knowledge of events, and before I could think better of it I voiced my confusion. “Your husband doesn’t mind you not wearing a ring?” Nishikino stiffened, not even remarking on the fact that this was somewhat of a non sequitur given what she’d said so far. It was also, I had to admit, lacking in the kind of manners that she was no doubt accustomed to. Doubtless none of her maids would dare speak to her so rudely.

“I’m not married.”

My heart pulled off a very accurate impression of a startled cat: it stopped dead in its tracks and then gained a sudden burst of incredible speed.

Once again I was faced with a powerful cocktail of emotions, and it wasn’t the kind that came with an umbrella. No, this was more like the kind with a recipe no one ever asked for and no one ever shared, that slid across the bar in a forebodingly sturdy looking glass when someone came in looking like they didn’t much care if they ever left again and suspected no one else did either.

There were a lot of negative flavours in there. Confusion. Annoyance. A hint of betrayal. But swirling around my mind’s highball glass was an unrequested shot of the most dangerous spirit this side of lighter fluid: hope.

It was insane, which normally would have made it out of place in my noggin but currently meant it was in good company. Buried under the questions and accusations was the tiny thrill of knowing that Maki wasn’t off the market.

 _Nishikino._ Like a proverbial bucket of water to the face, the part of my brain still working properly stepped in to nip that little slip of the mental tongue in the bud. The time for “Maki” was long since past, and making an assumption about romantic prospects with her was a mistake I wouldn’t make twice.

Instead, I made a different mistake and accepted her case. No one’s perfect.

 


	3. The Pretender

“You really fucked up this time, huh Nick?” I was sitting in a cafe that looked about as low rent as my office, eating a sandwich that barely cost anything and was still overpriced. The man rightfully questioning my judgement was the proprietor and head chef of the establishment, and if he told me he had no taste buds I'd be inclined to believe it.

 

“So maybe it's not the easiest case I ever took, but trust me, Nishikino's got the kind of money that makes a gal consider workin’ a little harder than normal. I figure if I can pull this off I'll make enough to pay for the mob’s wounded pride and still cover rent for a year.” It was bullshit, but as retroactive justifications go, I figured it was a pretty believable one.

 

“What, you think a couple of G’s is gonna let you keep your fingers if you put Blake away? Keep dreaming.” Roy didn’t seem especially suspicious of my motives, but he did seem pretty unimpressed with my assessment of the situation. 

 

“I'm not planning to put Blake away, Roy. The dame didn’t hire me to get revenge or pursue the noble ideal of justice. She just wants her box back. I figure if I lean on the right people and spread around some talk of out-of-town police, the big bosses’ll encourage Blake not to bring in trouble over some personal score and I'll be able to talk him into selling. It'll be more than a couple big ones and even Arnati’s gotta see that a night's work ending in that kind of profit is a good deal.”

 

“Sounds a little too neat to me. This case smells like trouble, Nick. Guy like you don't make a habit of finding trouble just for the cash. What's the real reason you didn't chase her off?”

 

“Maybe I did it cause us Japanese girls gotta stick together.” I suggested, making a face at something in my sandwich that looked a lot like a hair. 

 

Roy rolled his eyes and flicked the offending follicle off my bread. “Yeah, you're so prouda them two facts that you got half the city calling you Mr. Young. That right there is the kinda important heritage you'd stick your neck out for.”

 

“Hey, Nick Young is good for business.” I protested, trying to drown some of the flavour of Roy’s culinary sensibilities in ketchup. “You still don't call me Nico, so you don't get to complain.”

 

“It's too fuckin confusing to use a different name for around different people.” Roy grumbled.

 

In this city, I had two names. For people I knew well or didn't much care what they thought, Nico Yazawa served well enough. It wasn’t a name I’d be in a hurry to pull out at a Tokyo dinner party, but my star had fallen long enough ago that out here, where people mostly associated the word “idol” with the sort of thing Indiana Jones found in ancient ruins, it was blessedly free of association.

 

But it wasn't a name that worked all the time. Some people wouldn't work with a woman, or at least wouldn't trust or respect her. Some people wouldn't work with a Japanese expat. Some people even thought “Nico” was the Italian name, so racism caught me from two different angles. So when I didn't know if the potential client or informant was progressive enough to handle the truth, I gave them the nice male all-American name “Nick Young”, and my office’s door simply read “N.Y., PI”. PI only ever stood for one thing, but N.Y. had the useful quality of being ambiguous.

 

Looking at old photos, you'd assume trying to pass me off as male was the kind of inept con that a drunkard insisting he was sober would try to pull on an unimpressed beat cop, but in truth it was a lie that was rarely seen through. The first place anyone would look to find me out offered no clues: my chest wasn't much bigger than it had been when I was fifteen, and I didn't make a habit of wearing tight fitting shirts or bras that showed up through clothing. My usual attire of a button down shirt with a loose tie and black pants might make me look a little scruffy, but it certainly didn't make me look feminine. It didn't hurt that the combination of strain and aging had pushed my voice well below soprano. 

 

Well, it didn't hurt my ability to play Nick Young. It had certainly hurt my previous career. Idol fans eat up youth and cuteness, high voiced little girls too underdeveloped and adorable to be real. Makeup hid plenty, but it couldn't fix everything. Pick your favourite little collection of wasted talent and pandering lies, add a deeper voice and let ‘em grow a couple inches, then watch as their “devoted” followers scatter like cockroaches when the light's turned on.

 

“Ah shit, just when you were startin’ to smile again. The sandwich wasn't that bad, was it? I used the good lettuce and everything.”

 

I glanced at my sandwich. The lettuce looked about as crisp as a worn out shirt that just came out of the wash. It also appeared to be going slightly brown. “The sandwich is terrible Roy, but it always is.” I said, taking a bite. “Whaddya mean ‘starting to smile again’? I'm the same shinin’ star of joy I always am.”

 

Roy looked offended, and I was damn sure it wasn't because I'd pointed out that his cooking skills were on par with a blind ferret with no hands. “How long do you think I've known you? I can tell when you're fakin’ happy after this long, at least. You mighta been pretendin’ to smile, but you came in here in one hell of a bad mood, and your mood was gettin’ better until just then. Is it about the Nick thing?”

 

Roy and I had known each other for a while, ever since I met him on a case involving a cheating boyfriend with awful taste in food; and a nasty way of treating women that ended up getting him a nice long vacation in a private room with 24/7 staff. Partly due to my assistance. I'd taken one look at Roy in a dirty apron with a suspicious expression on his face and decided I was introducing myself as Nick. Turned out he was an alright guy in the end, but by the time I told him my real name he was too used to “Nick” and not enthused at the idea of switching based on who was around.

 

“Nah, I don't care about that.” I said, waving off the notion. “Nishikino brought back some bad memories, is all.”

 

“This about something back in Japan? Even more reason to avoid this case, Nick.” I hadn't shared particulars about my past with anyone in this city, but Roy knew I had a history with my home nation that I wasn’t interested in reconnecting with.

 

“Nah, case isn't to do with it, client's the problem. Knew her way back when.”

 

‘Knew her way back when.’ I tried to keep my tone casual, but that was like trying to act nonchalant when you'd been shot in the gut. The only thing more suspicious than consciously acting normal was the phrase “nice to see you, officer” delivered without sarcasm. Besides, any fool could see the blood. 

 

“Ah.” Roy said, having seen the blood. Displaying an extraordinary talent for voicing things best left unsaid that did a lot to explain why he didn't have a boyfriend, he added “So you took the case cause it was her askin’.”

 

“Last thing I owe her is any damn favours, Roy. I took the case cause she'll overpay and that's the end of it.” I said, restraining myself from snapping at him.

 

“Sure, sure.” he said, unconvinced but managing to keep it to himself. Maybe he had a chance to land Mister Right after all. Or at least Mister Right Now.

 

Somehow I'd managed to finish my sandwich and as far as I could tell, I was still alive. Relishing this minor miracle, I stood up to leave. “Alright, enough gossiping. Time to get to work. Sooner I wrap this up, the sooner I can start payin’ off bills.” Roy gave me a nod and I replied with a wave as I headed out the door.

 

The city awaited, and I had a lot to do.


	4. The Asphalt Jungle

So far, my day wasn’t the kind of eventful that made the broadsheets, but I might at least get a cameo in some personal diaries.

“Dear diary,” our hypothetical mobster might write, contemplatively chewing the end of his worn down pencil, probably used mostly for jotting down scores. “Today that idiot Nick showed up and started snoopin’ around, so I told him to get lost or I’d punch him in the face. He’s still incredibly attractive and has a wonderful voice.”

Alright, so maybe the devolution into love letter was more fantasy than deduction. So sue a girl for indulging in a little bit of optimism on a day that made pessimism real easy.

My plan had gone over about as well as asking for a car bomb at an Irish bar. The goons had clearly already gotten marching orders, and as soon as I brought up Arnati I got shown the door with all the subtlety I’d come to expect from heavies. That is to say, when they threatened me, they didn’t specify _which_ bones they’d break.

That alone wasn’t enough to completely kneecap the plan, as long as I avoided losing my own kneecaps. I couldn’t get to Arnati by playing Johnny Rumorseed and sowing panic in the ranks, but my position served me well. I was someone who sometimes gave tips to the mob about ongoing investigations. And so I knew which ears to whisper those tips into.

 

* * *

 

The first pair of those ears belonged to Jimmy the Weasel. Jimmy’s name was an accurate one. Aside from the fact that he was about as trustworthy as his namesake, his long nose and wispy moustache made him look like he’d be more than at home if he sidled up to a pack of furry woodland rodents and started whispering about where they could find bird’s nests. Jimmy was the kind of traitor that no one really felt betrayed enough by to kill. Sure, he’d sell you out, but he’d sell out whoever he sold you out to right back to you. And if you knew your enemy, he’d sell them out _in advance_ and feed them lies when they bought him off. Using Jimmy was a fine art, and the masters of it profited.

And so did Jimmy. Whatever crazy tricks he’d pulled to get here, he was now in the enviable position of being paid to tell the truth, to lie, and to shut up. Somehow, throughout all this, he carefully avoided backing the losers too much or crossing the wrong people.

I wasn’t deep enough in mob politics to play the bad info game with Jimmy, and didn’t have the money or influence to get truth out of him. So to Jimmy, I was two things: someone who gave him info to sell or lie about, and someone he told whatever he’d “heard”. Usually it was bullshit, often bullshit he’d been paid to say, but you can learn a lot from what people _want_ to be said.

“Your info’s bad, Nick.” Right now, though, he was giving me bad news that I did trust him on. “Ain’t no foreign cops looking for trouble. Arnati’s got out of town business, alright, but he’s got his victim real scared. No way she’s ratting him out.”

“Yeah? How are you so sure, Jimmy?” I asked, waving off the cigarette he offered me. I was no stranger to vice, but I didn’t smoke. It wasn’t out of habit from that sort of thing being banned as an idol- I indulged in plenty of things that would have gotten me thrown out of my agency. No, even if I entertained no illusions about my future prospects, the risk of damaging my voice and my lung capacity just never appealed. I still had my pride. Plus my job meant being able to run fast and a for a long time could be very useful.

Jimmy, however, smoked like a chimney. Between that and how thin he was, I wondered just how much stress he endured playing his high stakes game of “too useful to die.” It wasn’t a job you could retire from, either. If he backed away from the web of betrayal, it would just give resentment time to fester and someone would realize there was no longer any gain in delaying their revenge.

“Arnati’s got ears in the police and he’s been listenin’ hard lately. He ain’t heard nothing, and no way out of towners would make a move without letting our hometown boys know.”  I swore internally. I figured Arnati would be sitting on his heels, and would be startled if anything went wrong, but he must have been more worried about Nishikino than I’d expected. If he was watching the cops, he’d never believe that the law was ready to make a move. Jimmy was right- any other jurisdiction would give the local precinct a heads up before they started planning any moves.

“Well, guess my warning’s not much good.” I said, putting my coat back on and standing to leave the dingy little bar we were chatting in. Jimmy spend a lot of time in bars. Probably hoping that he’d be less likely to catch a bullet with a pack of witnesses around. “I assume you won’t take it too personal if I verify your story?”

Jimmy shrugged. “Hey, no one ever trusts me when I’m telling the truth.” It was true. If Jimmy told you the sky was blue, you’d look up to check.

Unfortunately for me, Jimmy wasn’t spreading tales for cash this time. Everywhere I went, I got the same story: Whoever had told me that out of town cops were ready to jump on this had bad info or was lying, because the police didn’t have so much as a hint of anyone setting up in their town. Even my police contacts confirmed they didn’t have any joint operations coming up. I didn’t bother to tell them that Arnati had someone inside the department. They probably already knew.

Then again, I already knew they didn’t have any joint operations, being as I’d made the whole thing up, but I’d still asked. It would look too suspicious for me not to. You never knew who might be gathering information about you when you were trying to gather information.

My last hope was that Arnati’s paranoia meant he was worried enough to cash out and see the back of this whole affair. If I wanted to find that out, I knew my next stop.

 

* * *

 

Lorenzo Crane was a cold man, and not one I liked dealing with. He was unsettling, and there was something… off about him. I’d never seen him out of a suit, for one thing. Everyone went off duty, but either Lorenzo managed to keep to himself to a level approaching bigfoot’s legendary elusiveness, or he wasn’t part of “everyone”. On top of that, I’d never heard him speak in any voice other than a measured, low tone, just that tiny hint quieter than a normal man spoke. It put you in mind of a motionless wolf. Just because it wasn’t being aggressive didn’t mean you were more than a few seconds from dead.

But if you needed to deal with the mob without rattling too many chains or being too direct, he was one of the best points of contact. He worked out of an office on the east side of town, in an area that looked run down but an observant eye would notice was severely lacking in vagrants and street rats. There was money here, but it was money that didn’t want to announce itself.

Lorenzo was a somewhat of a professional broker. Of everything. Drugs, blackmail material, counterfeits, kidnapping, assassination- name an illegal good or deed that money changed hands to accomplish, and Lorenzo could turn your money into it, or turn your services into money. I had the sneaking suspicion that if he was put into jail, crime would ebb like someone pulled the stopper on a bathtub. It’d take years for anyone to rebuild his networks of buyers and sellers.

We weren’t on the best of terms, given what side of the law I tended to live on, but Lorenzo was a man who firmly believed in burning no bridge he might someday wish to cross.

“I do not know how you found out about this arrangement, Mister Young. I would quite like to know, in fact.” Despite his words, Lorenzo gave no indication of surprise when I brought up Nishikino and Arnati’s little “agreement” over Nishikino’s keepsake.

“I will not bother to ask. I am sure you will not tell me.” Lorenzo was continuing, not waiting for a response. “However, I can give you the answer to your question now: Mister Arnati will not be selling the item for any price other than what he has suggested to the legitimate owner. He has instructed me to decline any offers, even if you happen to have what he requested from the client. He will deal only with the original holder.”

Lorenzo’s voice was generally unreadable, but I could detect a faint hint of displeasure. If Arnati spoke to him about this deal, only to tell him he wasn’t taking offers, that meant one of two things. Either Blake was getting some kind of sick pleasure from making Nishikino send the photos herself, or he wasn’t planning to return the box even if she _did_ pay up, stringing her along with the threat of its destruction to make more and more demands. Probably both- if the crime was motivated by the sting of rejection, he probably wouldn’t stop until she’d utterly debased himself or he’d destroyed the thing out of spite. Hopefully, he wanted the photos enough that he hadn’t done so already.

Either way, it meant that my plan was dead in the water.

“I would advise that you leave, Mister Young. We have no further business, and you make many of my clients… nervous.” I didn’t need to be told twice. This area of town always made me paranoid. I worried someday I’d walk into the wrong alley and find out too much to keep breathing.

I beat feet out of Crane’s office and back towards my own.

 

* * *

 

As night started to fall on the city, I unlocked the door of my office and collapsed into my chair. I’d never been one for drugs, and I kept drinking in moderation, but I’d tasted enough illicit pleasures to get the measure of them. Not a lot of them matched the bliss of putting my feet up after walking all day. And after today, I could use some simple pleasures like that.

What I could also use was a stiff drink.

As I cracked open a bottle of whiskey and poured myself a glass, I glanced at my clock and grimaced. Any minute now, Nishikino would come through my door. And she wasn’t going to like what I had to say.

I didn’t much like what I had to say either.

Before I could spend too much time thinking in circles about why I wasn’t looking forward to kicking my past right back out of my life again, my door opened and Nishikino swept in.

“So, how’s it going?” Nishikino’s outfit today wasn’t playing at being casual. She was in a long dress, black as midnight with twinkles of starlight running through it, flashing and glinting in the light when she moved. A slit ran up the side of it, giving tempting flashes of her long, pale leg. The neckline was high enough to be modest, but low enough to showcase a predictably expensive necklace. She looked like she should be attending an opera, or a fancy private screening, not standing in a dingy office. In other words, she looked unbearably beautiful.

Her voice, however, was notably worried.

“It’s not.” I said. No point delaying. Anyone who told you that you should prefix bad news with formalities and pleasantries was a showman who relished the drama or dense as a twelve gauge slug. The faster you got to the news, the less time the recipient spent stewing in suspense. “The case is over. Go to the police.”

Nishikino paled. “What? What do you mean?” I was a little surprised at how desperate she sounded. I half expected her to dismissively state that I’d performed exactly as expected and flounce out. After my relationship with her, the idea that she’d actually had some kind of faith in me was a strange one. “I thought you said you were the best detective in town! Can’t you solve any case?” Seemed like she hoped to appeal to my pride. If you were working with a twenty year old playbook, it was the kind of move you’d come up with. Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t twenty years younger, and pride didn’t come into this.

“There _is_ no case, Nishikino. There’s no mystery here. You know who stole it already. You want me to crack the case? Here: Arnati stole it. He lives in the Silver Arches casino, penthouse suite.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not the police, you know? I can’t walk into his lobby and place him under arrest. I took the job because I had an idea of how to get him to sell, and it didn’t work. He won’t cash out.”

Nishikino clenched her fists by her sides and glared at me as I took another drink. “So that’s it then? You’re just giving up?”

I looked back at her impassively. “Call it what you want. I’m an investigator and I investigated.”

Nishikino was nearly shaking with rage now. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe I ever thought you were someone worth respecting. I can’t believe _you’re_ who Nico became.” Now the knives came out. What a shock. Nishikino, insulting me when she didn’t get her way. Ever the spoiled princess. Well, I was done getting angry. I’d lost control before, upset by the sudden reappearance, but now this was just painful reruns.

In retrospect, it was almost impressive how quickly my calm front crumbled.

“I thought we were the same.” she continued, still glaring. “You were striving to be an idol, I was striving to be a doctor. But in the end, I became a doctor, and here you are, burnt out and giving up.”

I slammed my glass on the counter so hard that the glass cracked. “We were _never_ the same!” All thoughts of keeping my cool were out of the window. I was seething with rage, and practically roaring at Nishikino. “You _strived._ Bullshit! BULLSHIT!”

I was out of my chair now, the pain in my feet utterly forgotten as I stalked over to her. “You know _nothing_ . Not a single _god damn thing_ . You accuse _me_ of giving up?! Who left μ’s first?! Who tossed away being an idol like a cheap dress you got bored of wearing?” Nishikino looked as if she wanted to retort to that, but I didn’t give her the chance.

“You didn’t climb your way to the top! You didn’t reach success by fighting for every inch, risking everything to move that little bit closer to the finish line! You had your fun with us silly little idol girls you knew in highschool, then you decided it was time to _grow up_ and hopped on your gold plated escalator from the last year of highschool right to the top of daddy’s hospital.”

“How dare you!” Nishikino managed to get a word in now. “I wasn’t handed my position! I worked hard to get where I am!”

“Worked hard?” I spat. “The fact that you think that studying diligently is the same thing, even in the same _league_ as what I did is why you’ll _never_ understand. It’s why you were _never_ like me. You know what you are, Nishikino? You’re a gym instructor, telling a boxer that you know exactly what their life is like, that you’ve gone through the same thing, because you work yourself ragged punching a speedbag.”

I was getting closer and closer the angrier I got, and Nishikino took a half step back, cowed into silence.

“Tell me, Nishikino, when you were cracking the spines of books and looking at the clock, feeling so brave for studying in the dead of the night, did you ever ruin anyone? Did you ever walk into a room with twenty young girls, eyes full of stars and hope, and say to yourself ‘I’m going to destroy the future of everyone here’? Did you ever watch someone’s dream die in front of you because you snatched their last chance away from them, because you needed it climb higher, higher, ever higher to reach that impossible summit? Did you ever crush someone’s ambitions because only one of you could get that TV spot, only one person can be number one in the rankings, and no one remembers number two a week later? Did anyone ever put a knife in your back? Did you ever have to just accept a betrayal and move on, smiling for the crowds an hour after someone you thought was a friend tried to send you to the gutter?”

I turned away from her, staring out the window, unable to look at her face any more. I could see myself reflected in the dirty glass, and my eyes were hard. “Did your whole world ever fall apart, Nishikino? Did you ever realize that after years and years, no amount of talent or work could make you new and exciting again? That no amount of training could stop time from destroying your natural gifts?”

I turned back to her, my anger cold now, still intense but no longer wild and fiery. “No. Of course you didn’t. You just kept on _working hard_ and _doing your best_ and everything fell into place. You didn’t have to put your life back together because it never fell apart. Never even cracked. And now you come in here crying because for the first time in your life, you lost something you wanted. Well you know what, Nishikino? I don’t care. I don’t give a damn if Arnati burns your stupid first all A’s report card or whatever the hell he stole.”

I walked back behind my desk, leaving Nishikino in silence as I inspected my now worthless glass before tossing it in my trash bin. Lucky it was empty when I slammed it. No sense wasting whiskey on Nishikino’s self-absorbed tantrum.

“It’s not a report card.” Nishikino managed. Her voice was shaking, but it wasn’t rage. She sounded like she was going to cry. Good.

“What the fuck do I care what it is?” I asked, fishing out another glass from a drawer.

“It’s a memento of the only person I’ve ever truly loved.”

I stopped midway through opening my bottle.

I hadn’t thought I had a lot of illusions about my relationship with Nishikino. But it was only now that I realized I’d stupidly clung to one improbable belief- that Nishikino, had, at one point, actually loved me.

But no. Here it was, signed and stamped and ready to be presented to a lawyer- proof that she’d never cared at all. There was only one person in her life, ever. Everyone before that wasn’t worth mentioning.

“Please.” Nishikino’s voice was trembling worse now. “Nico, please, I’ll give you anything.”

“Anything?” My head was spinning and my heart ached. Reeling and in pain, I lashed out. “What if I asked you for your body? What if I told you that I wanted more than pictures, that I wanted a live show? What if I told you to sleep with me?” That’s what I’d wanted, once upon a time, wasn’t it? Hadn’t I wanted Nishikino to give herself to me?

Nishikino looked away. “...The only reason I didn’t send him the photos is I know he won’t return it if I do.” she said, quietly. “I’ll do anything to get it back. Even that.”

My jaw clenched and I put down the bottle before I risked breaking more glassware. My veins burned with poison, jealously pumping out from my heart with every beat. Nishikino was willing to go that far just for a _trinket_ of this person. They were worth anything to her. I wasn’t even worth a phone call. For twenty. Damn. Years.

“...Leave an address.” I growled. Nishikino looked at me again and I continued. “I’ll get your fucking box, you will pay me a hundred thousand dollars for it, and I’ll send it to your hotel room. But you are _never_ allowed to come back. Send me a penny less, or show your goddamn face here again, and it’ll find a new home in the incinerator.”

Nishikino opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off. “Don’t say a goddamn word. Just leave the address in the mailbox downstairs and get the fuck out. Now.”

She did. And this time, my feelings about the prospect of her walking back out of my life weren’t mixed at all.

I could have asked for more. A hundred thousand dollars was a clearly unreasonable price, but it was easy enough for Nishikino to afford. I could have demanded millions, or unreasonable favours, or made impossible demands to be cruel. But I didn’t care. I just wanted money and wanted her to go away.

And now I had the same impossible damn job I’d tried to give up on once before. But at least Nishikino’s dress had given me an idea for how to get the box.

And if I died trying this stupid, dangerous, insane plan, at least then I’d be free of the memory of the look Nishikino had in her eyes when she was talking about the person she loved. Because right now, it was burned into my retinas so hard that when I closed my eyes, I couldn’t see anything else.


End file.
